


ghost

by MischiefManaged



Series: beautiful thieves [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe- Cyberpunk dystopia, F/F, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 18:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7982356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MischiefManaged/pseuds/MischiefManaged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angela is haunted. Or so she says to herself on days when she’s feeling particularly melodramatic. Today is one of those days, the pristine white walls of Talon HQ only serving to further those thoughts. She hates white, now. It’s the color of suffering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghost

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place after 'burn it and leave,' but that doesn't really need to be read first unless you want a little more insight into how the world works.

Angela is haunted. Or so she says to herself on days when she’s feeling particularly melodramatic. Today is one of those days, the pristine white walls of Talon HQ only serving to further those thoughts. She hates white, now. It’s the color of suffering.

But this ghost; oh, this beautiful ghost. Angela only sees her in this building, when she comes in for her bi-weekly debriefing. Usually, she only catches a glimpse; blue body armor and flowing black hair. She had spoken to her once, and had been blindsided by the woman’s soft smile and sharp eyes. Pharah, she had called herself. Security detail, is what she called her job. Angela knows it’s more than that, and she has to wonder if this woman is here willingly. 

The thoughts of this woman always linger with Angela after she leaves. It’s hard not to make her interest obvious, but she needs to remain impartial between these walls. If she shows one weakness, it will be exploited. Ruin her perceived reliability. It’s especially hard when she doesn’t see the woman on her way to the conference room, despite having taken the route that goes past her usual patrol. She doesn’t ask about her, because how can she? 

True to form, once she has given her report and left the building, her first thoughts are of the woman. The lady in blue, she would think when feeling poetic. Pharah, she would sigh to herself when caught up in her daydreams. She wonders if her patrol has been changed, wonders if they’ve made her go out in the field to round up dissenters. She wonders if she’ll have to patch up the woman’s victims. 

Closer to her building, something feels off. A nervous sort of energy tangles with itself within her chest and she inhales deeply in hopes of shaking it off. It doesn’t work; and as she approaches the front door, she hesitates. Something about this is wrong. She can’t go in this way.

It wouldn’t be too odd for her to go in from the back door. It’s a common practice when she feels unsafe and so far Talon has had nothing to say about it. However, as she’s rounding a corner, a hand grips her arm tightly and pulls her off into the shadows. Another places itself over her mouth to smother her instinctual cry. Immediately her mind starts running. This could be anyone. This could be someone who needs help, someone from Blackwatch, or someone seeking blood.

Either way, she goes still until the person releases her. She spins fast, intending to strike at whoever it is, but stills upon seeing her assailant. It’s dark, and she has to squint into to see, but that’s-- “Pharah?”

Pharah nods, but says nothing. Angela is a little too stunned to react for a moment, but as something clicks, alarms start going off in her head. “Are you-- Are you hurt?”

Once again, the woman nods, but when she tries to speak all that comes out is a pained rasp. But Angela isn’t a doctor for nothing, demeanor remaining calm and assessing despite her initial panic. It’s too dark for her to see, but the smell of blood is strong; even in the damp air of the alley. “Okay. Can you walk?”

Pharah nods once more, although she staggers when she tries to right herself. There’s no time for Mercy to tamper with the security footage before getting her in, and she hopes that she can alter it after the fact. 

She doesn’t have to, as Pharah loops an arm around her throat and presses something into her back. A gun, maybe? Angels stiffens, but she can guess what the woman is getting at. They’ll think she’s being held hostage, if they’re actively watching or when they review the footage. Her mouth twists into a frown. “There’s no hope in you going back if this is how you choose to do it,” Angela warns.

The laugh she gets in response is strained. “I… don’t want...to.”

Angela purses her lips but nods. “Very well.”

Hoping that she looks as distressed as possible (not necessarily hard, given how worried she is for the other woman), Angela leads the way into the back door and up the two flights of stairs it takes to get to her medical office. (In hindsight, having it on the lower level would have been more convenient.)

By the time she can get Pharah onto the operating table, the woman is already struggling to take in breath. She can see why, the hole in her abdomen large enough that Angela has to wonder just what it is that she’d done. The metal that twists around it points inwards, as if she had been blasted through with something. 

“I’ll have to remove your body armor,” Angela says as she begins to gather supplies. Another wheeze of a laugh, and her blood runs cold. She doesn’t want to hear what’s next.

“Is… my body.” 

As she suspected. She let out a string of angry German, furious twice over; not just for Pharah. Angela had heard about those particular experiments; a robotic exoskeleton of sorts. She had seen a few people who had parts of themselves remade in such a fashion, but never to this extent. Everything below the neck, it would seem, is a prosthetic of sorts. Except more than that, everything organic being replaced with something “better.”

The blood seeping out is black, the telltale sign of nanotechnology. Technology that she herself had helped to create. A wave of nausea hits her at the thought, but she powers through. She has to cut the metal out first. 

Pharah doesn’t even seem to register the feeling of the laser knife, either having no pain sensors on the outside or from shock. It’s easy, after that, to remove the shards of metal. Nano-organs are designed to take a lot, adapting themselves to avoid the most possible damage; especially from shrapnel. Even now, she can see where Pharah’s organs are straining to piece themselves together in some way, but there’s very little left. This had to have been done with an explosive of some sort. 

There isn’t much Angela can do for this sort of injury on her own, and she bites her lip as an idea comes to her. Her caduceus staff has been in the works for years now as her primary research subject, and although it was completed months ago, she has yet to use it. Both because she doesn’t like to experiment on live subjects and because she doesn’t want Talon to know she has it. She had been hoping she could find her own way out of this life before they could ever get to recreate it; destroying her lab and the research with it. It would leave a lot of lives on the line, however, and thus she’s been hesitant to do so.

Still… She doesn’t want to watch this woman die on her table. “I have… something I could use to help heal you. It’s a staff that uses nanotechnology similar to that of your body, and should be able to rapidly duplicate your cells. But, I haven’t tested it yet. I can’t promise that it will save you, or that there will be no repercussions if it does.”

Without hesitation, Pharah grits out, “do it.”

It’s not nearly enough for proper medical consent, given Pharah’s physical state, but Angela is willing to accept whatever blame comes about from doing this. The staff itself is underneath the operating table itself, unassuming enough to seem just like a metal bar. Talon always searches her lab, but never her operating room; an oversight she’s willing to exploit. Should they find it, however, only she is able to activate it.

When she has it placed in the right spot, she activates it and watches as white-gold light washes over the woman and seemingly makes her glow. Beautiful, she thinks to herself. Slowly, her organs begin to grow back, nanocells duplicating at a rapid speed and working to reform to carry out their proper function.

It’s a few minutes at most, but it stretches out until it feels like an hour. Pharah doesn’t give any indication that she can feel what is happening. When the organs have reformed, Angela turns off the staff. Pharah is still exposed without the exterior metal. Only certain types respond to nanotech, and she hasn’t released that information yet. It’s bad luck that this isn’t the kind that does. 

“I’ll need to patch this up,” she says as she gesture to the hole in her armor, as if the woman somehow needs to be told which part of her is missing. Her cheeks turn pink once she realizes how silly the gesture was, but Pharah gives her a soft smile and a nod. 

It takes a decent bit of time to retrieve a piece of scrap metal from her lab. (Ironically, from her experiments with nanotech and metal.) So when she returns, Pharah almost looks surprised, eyes a little bit wide. “I half expected you to come back with agents in tow,” she admits with chagrin. “When I was injured, you were the first one I thought of. I couldn’t be sure, if you were truly with Talon; but I had hoped…”

Angela hums her acknowledgement, placing the somewhat flexible sheet metal over the missing armor. “I try to help people, if I can. This seemed the best way to do so, at the time that I joined. I was very young.”

“And now?” Pharah asks, startling Angela with her curiosity.

The blonde turns away to find her welding glove. Once it’s retrieved from her cabinet, she slips in on. Her shoulders sag; this conversation will only condemn her after this, but she’s already in deep. “Now, I’m not so sure. I have helped a lot of people, but my research has been used to do a lot of harm and will only continue to do so. I’m not sure the good outweighs the bad.”

She ignites the heating pad in the index finger of her glove, gently welding the edge of the metal to her armor. It won’t hold for an extended period, but it will last her until she can get to a mechanic. Pharah places a hand over the one Angela isn’t using. “You are a good person.” She looks as if she’s considering something for a moment, a pained expression on her face. “I.. I’ve killed a lot of innocent people in Talon’s name. They had taken me from my mother when I was just a child, and this… This life was all I knew. But today, today I saw them chase down children. A mother with her baby. I couldn’t just watch and let it happen. I helped them escape. And, well, I’m sure you can guess what happened after that.”

The story makes something in Angela  _ ache.  _ She can’t even begin to imagine what a life like that would feel like. And to make it through all of that and still become the type of woman who risks her entire life for some strangers, it’s… “Incredible. You, I mean. That is-- Um. You are a good person, too.”

She makes sure to test the metal for any give, and when she confirms it’s going to stay in place, she powers down the glove and sets it aside. “Thank you. Your opinion means a lot to me, doctor.”

Ah, and there’s the blush again. Angela curses her fair skin and tendency to embarrass easily, and turns away quickly to cover it up. “Please, call me Angela.”

“Angela,” Pharah tests the name out slowly, and Angela revels in the way it sounds through her accent. Lovely. Everything about this woman makes her heart flutter. She feels like a teenager all over again, fumbling awkwardly through a silly crush. She can’t even keep herself from turning to face her once again. “I’m Fareeha.”

A hand is extended to her, metal and blue and oh so inviting. Angela takes it, expecting a handshake. Instead, Fareeha brings the hand up to her lips to place a kiss over her knuckles. “You should leave,” is all that her brain supplies, and instantly her eyes widen as she rushes to correct herself. “I mean-- You’re in danger here. They’ll probably have seen or guessed where you went, and I don’t want them to-- I’m sorry.”

“You are right,” Fareeha agrees, slowly steadying herself so she can sit up. She seems to have taken Angela’s words in good humor, a light smile playing on her lips. “But I’m afraid I have nowhere to go.”

Of course, she had forgotten to mention Blackwatch. It’s any wonder how she managed through the surgery with the way she’s behaving. She inhales deeply, calms her mind, and wills herself to behave like a professional. Her hopes of actually achieving that are dashed when they make eye contact. “I know a place. I’m afraid you will stand out too much to take the usual route, but I can send you to someone who will get you there. She’ll show you the way and then cover your tracks. Essentially, you’ll be gone without a trace.”

She glances at where she knows they’ve wiretapped the room, a recent edition due to Talon being suspicious of her missing footage. Fareeha hasn’t noticed. She places a finger to her lips to signal for silence and it’s only then that the thought occurs to the other woman. Angela pulls out a simple notepad and pen (hard to come by, but useful for these sorts of things) from her desk, and writes out the instructions for how to find the woman before handing it over. “They’ll have noticed you’re here, by now. I can erase the footage of you leaving, but everything else is probably already in their systems.”

“And the sound they’re recording?” Fareeha asks, frown tugging on her lips. 

“Goes directly to them,” Angela replies. She hasn’t had any “stray” patients in since that time, although she had planned on working from a different room should one happen upon her building. “It’s fine.”

Fareeha’s face indicates her thoughts on that particular matter. “Come with me. If they catch you doing this…”

“They will be cross, but I won’t be killed. I’m too valuable of an asset, although I’m sure I won’t go without punishment,” she says, voice light despite the dread that’s slowly overcoming her. It was worth it, she thinks, to at least have helped her. Another thought occurring, she jots out a note and hands it over. “When you arrive, give this to one of the people there. They’ll know what to do. Now, you must hurry. Leave out of the side entrance, instead of the back.”

Fareeha doesn’t look at what’s inside this note. For privacy, Angela isn’t sure. She hopes the woman will read it later, if only to memorize what’s written in there. For a moment, Fareeha almost looks like she’s going to up and kidnap Angela to get her away from this, but instead she sighs. “Thank you, Angela. For everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

She watches from her computer as the woman leaves and immediately erases that footage right after it’s been recorded. There’s no need to be clean with it. Talon already knows what she’s done, this will just afford Fareeha a head start. She would have done this for anyone, she tells herself. And it’s true. But she doesn’t feel even a trace of regret like she might have with anyone else. As an afterthought, she deletes all of her research files. The ones on this computer are the only copy. They were never backed up, they aren’t on any external hard drive. She deletes them, and they’re gone.

Angela can see the operatives approaching her front door after a half an hour of waiting. Four of them. They must not find her a threat. They would be right. She has a gun, but she doesn’t intend to use it. Instead she sits back in her seat and wonders what, exactly, they will do to her. She was correct in saying that they will not kill her, especially since she’s gone and deleted her research. Reconditioning is a probability, though they might not want to take the risk of her losing her knowledge. Torture is another option, more probable given their medical capabilities. 

Regardless, she’s accepted her fate. She hopes, whatever happens, that she retains the memories of Fareeha; or will she really will end up as nothing more than a ghost? A phantom lingering in the back of her mind that always slips from between her fingers.

 

She stares at her white walls, framing white doors. Her white uniform has been stained black.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i started out wanting this to end on a happy note but this au doesn't really afford that (yet). so i'm gonna. write a follow up to this as well. because i love them and want them to be happy and also i cry over character death and cant write it so!


End file.
